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Month: November 2012

I have been suffering from lack of sleep. Gritty eyes, pounding headaches, muscle spasms and just plain uncontrollable urge to close my eyes.

But I cannot and will not.

I sleep sporadically. Hence it is playing havoc with my system. I should be in dreamland by now but here I am holding my trusty phone writing the night away.

I had an hour nap late this afternoon and an hour nap again when i’ve put my babies to bed. Two of my siblings have sent me emails already to shut it and sleep.

But I can’t so I browsed through my phone’s photo gallery and 2 images caught my attention.

We are but humans and part of our make up is to feel emotions. To love, to hate, to worry. I have my share of “worries” and try very hard to stop myself from doing so. I can say God will take care of everything but that little cynic in my brain would say that God gave you free will to work things out. And I conclude that it must not negate each thought as I can merge them to have me say that God gave me free will to work things out with my faith and HIS guidance.

Today might be gloomy and dark and the next day thereafter but a day will come that ray of sunshine will pass through that dark ominous cloud.

– Give me an example from your current job, or a past one, where you had to overcome obstacles or difficulties in meeting your objectives.

The most recent example I could give you is when I have a project that is due and my laptop crashed. It took an entire day to recover all my files and thankfully the technician who did work on my laptop was a good one. Thereby letting me met my deadline.

– What were the worst problems you faced in your previous jobs? How did you handle them at the time? Would you handle them differently today? How?

The worst problem for me that I have encountered during my course of work employment in oDesk is not being able to find enough information on certain topics that I am researching. Example would be when I was hired to research contacts on certain companies, it is data mining at its finest but unfortunately for me the companies assigned to me were not yet online and most information that is available is second hand.

If it happened today, I wouldn’t have that same problem as those companies have gone online already.

– What have been your greatest work and non-work achievements?

Greatest work achievement is having my writing jobs commended by my clients. And non work related achievement, becoming a mother to two beautiful human beings.

– Give me an example of a job where you had to learn and use new skills? How did you go about it?

I have not been nor hired into a job that I have no idea what I am doing. As a contractor I do not specifically apply nor accept job invites on jobs that I don’t know how to do. It does limit me but it will not give me any negative feedback. If in the course of an employment and a client will ask me to do something that I don’t know, the world wide web is big enough to provide information on anything and everything and I’m sure I can find one individual knowledgeable enough to provide me with information and details on how to do that certain job.

– Tell me about a time when you had to think outside the box?

I like to cross my t’s and dots my I’s and so far I really haven’t been into a situation significant enough to think outside the box.

– Tell me about the most difficult topic you had to write about?

It is not a topic per se that gives me a head ache the last time I had a client but writing for a specific group of people. Writing for certain demographics requires a different set of words and phrases, expressions and exclamations.

– Let’s say one of your tasks is to write a 2,000 words article about some topic. How will you approach this? What will be the first step that you’ll take? What would be the second? What would be the other steps that you’ll take?

Being a lesbian in this ever changing world nowadays is not for the faint of heart. They get ridiculed, frowned upon and most of all called names by the idiots with superiority complex.

I always say that a gay person is human first then his sexual preference next. If people would only stop and take a minute to think of what they are about to say towards somebody then we could avoid conflict, confusions and heartaches.

The way we treat members of gay community has come a long way, what with passing of laws allowing them same sex marriage and protection of their rights among others. But only on “some” countries.

Gay people often-times labelled as spawn of the devil. Really?

People are judgemental of what they don’t understand. Living with my sister allowed me to look at things from her point of view. She has seen a lot of upheavals in her life. There were numerous struggles and valiant attempts to be accepted.

In our small town community in the backwoods of the Philippines, she is living openly as a lesbian and even-though there are others of the same sexual orientation as herself in our town, there are still ripples of non-acceptance.

She works in an honourable profession. Lives according to what God has mandated us to do, respecting others, being kind and simply live life for the good of others and the community.

Some people are just hypocrites.

The only concern that I have now is what my sister’s sexual preference is, it is affecting her daughter. You see she has a daughter and she is being bullied about her mom.

Should I kept quite about it? I already hear stuff about my sister, should her daughter hear the same? Adults can be cruel. Parents may talk about my sister in front of their children. And children will repeat it to their peers, my niece and any person who is willing to listen. Getting ridiculed for having a mother who is lesbian is not how I envisioned life for my niece nor my children to be.

I have been sleeping on and off. And now, its past 2:00am and I am very much awake.

Night terrors!

I will no longer know if it is insomnia thats ruining my sleep because apparently there is a new term for it “night terrors”. And I am not a happy camper.

She wakes up everybody. It played havoc on her sleep pattern and it is making us all grumpy and cranky.

On top of this new toddler development, she now has an idea of mine and no. Mama is mine. Toys is mine. Pacifier is mine. Everything except papa is mine. Food is no. Water is no. Any question is answered by a no and when you give her that exasperated look she’ll ask you what’s wrong. 😦

With hundreds if not thousands of write ups, reviews and other type of commentary about instagram, mine would be lost amongst it. But let me tell you still my story.

I am not among the first user of instagram, nor would be the last but I love every single picture that I have posted on it.

Its primary use to people I guess is posting extraordinary shots of the sky, clouds, sunset or food but for me it is a diary of sorts.

In our digital world, it is very easy for us to take photo of anything especially of our loved ones but we procrastinate on having it printed or we do not print it at all. Most have a thousand pictures saved in their hard drives and me as well and It is here where instagram come into play.

With 2 kids, a toddler and a baby, almost all activities is documented. From breakfast up to play time before sleeping at night. At the end of the day, I choose one or two pictures of my kids, editing it and then post.

Now that I have posted it on instagram, it is easy access for me. If and when I decided to print my pictures, I have my instagram pictures as reference to who, when and why of it.

Aside from being a diary of sorts to me, it also serves as a medium to post my opinion on anything in image form.

By using hashtags i.e. #proudmom or #pride I allow other users not only my followers to see, like or comment on my picture.

It took me reading another image theft or using another person’s image without asking permission before I decided to look for ways to watermark my own pictures.

I am only an amateur photographer and most of my photos are of my children and other family members but since I upload them to the internet, it makes me want to mark them. I am not really concerned with photo theft but I am most concerned with inappropriate use of my pictures.

There are a couple of free applications on Google Play that allows you to mark/edit your photos but I like the “Add Watermark” app.

The app that i’m using is free and there is some limitations but it serves its purpose. The only noticiable difference from the paid, full version for me is the use of your own image as watermark and the automatic sharing of your photos.

The app has a very good and user friendly interface. You can edit old photos or take a new picture and put watermark. The general setting is where you can edit your image or in my case I can edit the text which ill be using as watermark. It allows you to edit the font, color, shadow among others. The text option also allows you to use “placeholders” e.g. date, filepath or time etc. Clicking back button brings you to “home” where you can edit the watermark placement, size and also there is a rotate function. The finished product can be saved in the app itself or to a custom folder.

The only downside is you have to do it manually but having it for free does not make it as big as an issue as to when i have to pay for it.

Life is too precious to dwell on the negative stuff. Affirmation and recognition are some of the ingredients on having a wonderful life. No matter how crazy a day is, having 2 beautiful human beings, breathing, giggling is more than enough to give me courage to stand up and be a mom. Let us be kind to each other. Spread love and give thanks.